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Stephen's Web ~ Link
OLWeekly
by Stephen Downes
Apr 07, 2017
The Truth About Zero Calorie Foods
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Wrapping 'post-modernism week' we have this video
explaining why a packet of zero-calorie Splenda has 4
calories. What I like of course is the way a student uses
science to prove this, then records a video for YouTube.
When you wonder why people don't believe in authorities or
facts any more, consider perhaps why we allow non-facts to
inform FDA-approved food lables. I got this from George
Couros Linkwho
asks, "Do we ask our students to do this type of work in
our schools? Not only tackling ideas but sharing them
through a medium that reaches so many people." And of
course we don't, though the supply of material to work with
is endless.
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How A Former iPod Chief Built The World’s Most Advanced
First-Aid Kit
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“Everybody is focusing on doing things in the cloud,
but the place where you really control the experience is
the endpoint.” I agree, and that's why I think there
will be a swing back from cloud-based to local technologies
(but no time soon). This health clinic in a box is a good
example. "Gale is a breadbox-size chest containing
diagnostic tools in the bottom drawer and medications and
supplies in the top drawer. On the top is a pop-up touch
screen that displays various interactive treatment guides."
It is designed for environments where medical assistance
(and internet access) are not readily available, though it
would be very useful in a connected environment as well.
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OER Curation at Scale: An Opportunity to Support
Personalized Learning
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This is a nice case study in the use of OERs but I think
it's more significant because of its reference to the
definition Linkof personalized
learning: “A student experience in which the pace of
learning and the instructional approach are optimized for
the needs of each learner. Standards aligned learning
objectives, instructional approaches and instructional
content (and its sequencing) may all vary based on learner
needs. In addition, learning activities are meaningful and
relevant to learners, driven by their interests and often
self-initiated.”
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Is Matter Conscious?
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This is a tantalizing suggestion: "Philosophers and
neuroscientists often assume that consciousness is like
software, whereas the brain is like hardware. This
suggestion turns this completely around. When we look at
what physics tells us about the brain, we actually just
find software—purely a set of relations—all the
way down. And consciousness is in fact more like hardware,
because of its distinctly qualitative, non-structural
properties. For this reason, conscious experiences are just
the kind of things that physical structure could be the
structure of."
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This is what AI sees and hears when it watches 'The Joy of
Painting'
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Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting
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the most relaxing show in the history of television. But in
this video recording of how an AI might perceive the show,
it's a collection of eyeballs, creepy insects, spiders and
assorted sea creatures. Humans do the same thing, but with
less creepy results, as we have a much greater store of
images to select from and match to the phenomena. When we
see things, we're always trying to match what we see to
what we've seen before. What the video should make you do
is question how much of what we see is 'really' there and
how much is our interpretation. Exercise for the reader:
compare what the AI does with what science does
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and draw your own conclusion.
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How French “Intellectuals†Ruined the West:
Postmodernism and Its Impact, Explained
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I am more or less a post-modernist, though I arrived at my
understanding of the core ideas independently of the
authors cited in this article (though on reading them find
myself nodding in agreement). So I appreciate this clear
and articulate description of postmodernism, and the
argument offered against it. And I am sympathetic with the
observation that the postmodernists did not exactly make
their position clear. To me, it is clear, but you have to
step through a rhetorical mess to get to it. It's a bit
hard to do in one paragraph, but let me try:
Let's take the criticism offered by Erazim Kohak to the
effect that "tennis balls do not fit into wine bottles".
How is this not a fact? he asks. On observation, it is easy
to see that tennis balls do fit into wine bottles, but the
context here is of trying to squeeze it into the bottle
through the opening. Now what has happened here is that the
problem has been framed in such a way as to allow only one
way for a tennis ball to 'fit' into a wine bottle. But why
would we frame it that way? Why do we privilege Kohak's
description of tennis balls and wine bottles and how one
fits into the other? Once you ask that question, you become
a postmodernist.
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Why we never think alone
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This short post is a restatement of something from
Steven Sloman
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that has appeared numerous times in these pages over the
years: "Humans have built hugely complex societies and
technologies, but most of us don't even know how a pen or a
toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite
understanding so little? Because whilst individuals know
very little, the collective or ‘hive' mind knows a
lot." To make this work, though, is to walk a fine line.
Yes, there is the "fundamentally communal nature of
intelligence and knowledge," but we can create it only if
we interoperate as autonomous individuals.
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Getting Web Services Up and Running on Amazon Web Services
(AWS) Using Vagrant and the AWS CLI
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This is the sort of stuff I've been working on recently.
This is a particularly useful project: "here’s an
example of how to get a browser based application up and
running on EC2 using vagrant from the command line." The
description is pretty detailed and is probably not for
everyone. But the main point here is that this type of
server virtualization is the wave of the future - and (more
importantly) is what will enable the next wave of personal
web presences (I'm not really sure what to call them - more
than sites, less than applications).
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Vodafone Zambia introduces e-Learning portal
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Vodafone Zambia is launching something called the JUMP
Academy, "an internet-enabled application that offers
unlimited access to a wide range of educational materials,
tailored to the local curriculum and accessible through any
device." Access to the academy is free and it was planned
and developed locally in Zambia. "The JUMP Academy is a
major component of the company’s online portal dubbed
JUMP Linkwhich is an educational and
socially managed portal that serves to enhance e-learning
for personal development and growth."
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Computing Conversations: Bob Metcalfe on the First Ethernet
LAN
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From the description: "Computer magazine's multimedia
editor Charles Severance interviews Bob Metcalfe about the
creation of the first Ethernet local area network 40 years
ago at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center." We still use
ethernet today, and Metcalfe, of course, is the namesake
for "Metcalfe's Law", which states that"the value of a
telecommunications network is proportional to the square of
the number of connected users of the system" (per
Wikipedia). More on Metcalfe's Law
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Can pre-school children learn to do science?
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Of course the answer to the question in the headline is
'yes'. If you've ever tested the water with a toe before
diving in, you've done science. But what, exactly, is
science? This article is a bit weaker on this front. True,
it's not just measurement and units of measurement and it's
not just description. But science isn't just about asking
questions, either, not even if they're 'why' questions. And
children aren't "naturally prone to being good scientists,"
as the author avers. Science is, at core, about method -
it's a process of looking and discovering, trying things
out, seeing what happens, and reasoning about that in a
more or less systematic way. This is a process that takes
skill and development; it needs to be learned.
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It’s Not Their Pop Idol, but a Bot. Fans Cheer Anyway.
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I suppose the new form of fame and immortality will be to
have someone create a bot based on your personality. The
'Downes' bot will visit websites randomly and give them
negative reviews. More seriously, this article on bots
focuses - as it should - on the growing acceptance of bots
in society. It turns out that we don't mind communicating
with bots if they give us the sort of experience we're
looking for (and that experience is not 'press 1 if you
want to renew your account'). "“As A.I. develops,
everything is going to go into a mixed-reality world where
you could dial up a hologram of your favorite pop star and
have ‘real conversations’ with the artificially
intelligent version of that person." Or as Steven Tyler
would say, "Rock on!"
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What you’re revealing to your ISP, why a VPN isn’t
enough, and ways to avoid leaking it
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This is a long, detailed and technical post about what
information your internet service provider (ISP, called
'BIAS' in this article) can gather about your internet use
and sell to the government or other customers. It's written
clearly, though, and it should be easy enough for most
readers to follow. In a nutshell, here's what you should do
to protect your personal information (quoted):
Switch providers (see below) is at all possible, to one
that will not sell your data.
Use a VPN https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install to
protect and encrypt your traffic from your BIAS and to hide
your source (your home’s) IP address from others.
Enable DNS security, use DNSCrypt Link
target="_blank" rel="noopener"
data-href="Linkor DNSSEC and change your
DNS provider.
Use HTTPS as much as possible, install HTTPS Everywhere
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere" target="_blank"
rel="noopener"
data-href="Link
Be sure to use a device you control as your Internet
gateway, so none of the device’s unique identities
can be revealed. Setup your own wireless network and
replace any provided hardware if possible.
This is fairly comprehensive and not the easiest things for
an average home user to set up (corporate users already do
most of this, or should). At a certain point these need to
be bundled into a 'secure' internet service. ISPs will be
loathe to offer such a package. But a market exists.
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The New Skills Agenda for Europe
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This is one of four papers
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article that set the stage for a virtual seminar currently
taking place in Europe (register here
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfgcQm2dedwnDQqj2XV0bkS_C3-DQ9msOOOAfed6XBmnEF_Ew/viewform?c=0&w=1).
"The proposal is that Member States should introduce a
Skills Guarantee, which would involve offering to low
qualified adults... skills will to a great extent determine
competitiveness and the capacity to drive innovation. They
are a pull factor for investment and a catalyst in the
virtuous circle of job creation and growth. They are key to
social cohesion." There are numerous priority areas listed
which should be the subject of discussion and debate.
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Why 'A Domain of One's Own' Matters (For the Future of
Knowledge)
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The hardest thing to convince people of in education
technology, it seems to me, is that students need a space
to create. This is what i discovered in the years working
on a PLE, where there were all sorts of ideas for content
recommending and resource consumption, but outright
resistance to creative workspaces of any kind. But this is
what is needed, and this is what is behind initiatives such
as Domain of One's Own. So I a, supportive of Audrey
Watters's argument in this post.
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The Promise of Administrative Data in Education Research
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"Although these data are collected for purely
administrative purposes," write the authors, "they
represent remarkable new opportunities for expanding our
knowledge." This short essay (8 page PDF
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examines some of the purposes to which administrative data
in education could be put, and raises some of the issues
associated with using data in this way. "Administrative
datasets are collected for different reasons than research,
and the types of variables that are captured in
administrative data often do not comport with the types of
variables that testing many educational and social science
theories demands." There are also, of course, issues with
privacy and security. Good essay, cogently written. Image:
OECD Link
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My open source Instagram bot got me 2,500 real followers
for $5 in server costs
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The author's Instagram bot is described in detail in this
post, with links to Github and to a lot of documentation on
the various tests he ran. Stuff like this is
why Facebook is in trouble
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and why Instagram isn't worth the effort. I don't use
Instagram at all and left Facebook last August. But even
closer to the core of the problem is this statement: "Likes
and engagement are digital currency..." No they're not.
They are dross. The number of followers you have is
meaningless, just as meaningless as the number of people
you follow. Amassing quantity is industrial-age
thinking. Creating quality is millennial thinking.
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Creating Usability with Motion: The UX in Motion Manifesto
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When people talk about 21st century literacies, or digital
literacies, they usually talk about using social networks
and spotting fake news. But this is the sot of thing they
should be thinking about. We've never really had motion in
user interfaces before; the closest we've come is
television, which has its own set of tropes. But with
modern web design, motion in user experience (UX) design
has become standard. This article leads with 12 principles
of motion in UX. I look at these and ask, what do they
mean? What do they signify? And of course there is no
meaning inherent in the motion; it is entirely socially
constructed. And that process is still underway, which
makes it really fascinating.
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The Top Ed-Tech Trends (Aren't 'Tech')
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Audrey Watters gives us a reprise of some of her annual
'tech trends' reports and talks about some of the thinking
behind them. I'm inclined to agree with the observation
that the trends resemble themes or categories or narratives
more than they do trends. She also admits "they’re
narratives that are quite US-centric. I’d say even
more specifically, they’re California- and Silicon
Valley-centric." And she says "my reference to 'Silicon
Valley narratives' are meant to invoke these:
libertarianism, neoliberalism, and 'the ideology of the
‘new economy.’" She takes this through a nice
turn into a discussion of personalization and platforms.
Still, from my perspective, the more her narrative focuses
on a specifically U.S. social and political view of the
topic, the less relevant that narrative becomes.
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Games Pose Unique Accessibility Challenges
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This is probably the best advice, from Joshua Straub,
editor-in-chief of DAGERS http://dagersystem.com/"
target="_blank, a game journalism site for disabled gamer:
"Not every game can be or has to be accessible to every
single person,” but he encouraged developers to make
sure that “when you choose to put a barrier in front
of any player, you know why you are doing it."
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Nothing will change until you start building.
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I was at an IMS meeting ages ago and someone said to me,
"Quality ships." I've never let that statement go. It
doesn't matter how great your ideas are, if you don't make
something out of them, they may as well not exist. "Start
by building. Pick one project and do whatever you have to
do to ship it. If you want to write a book, start with
writing a page a day. If you want to build an app, start
with some sketches. Anyone can do it. This advice applies
to all creators. Once you start building and launching your
projects, you won’t be able to stop. Building will
become part of your identity. And even if your project
fails, you’ll keep at it." As I said more recently in
one of our own meetings: "there's always a reason not to do
something." You can always come up with something. But you
put that aside, and you ship.
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Jerks and the Start-Ups They Ruin
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I have long said that venture capitalists don't fund ideas,
they fund people like themselves. Surely the latest round
of business failures proves this. "Bro C.E.O.s are better
at raising money than making money. So why do venture
capitalists keep investing in them? It may be because many
of the venture capitalists are bros as well." The is one of
the reasons it's so difficult to find educational
technology that aligns with an educational culture. Public
and private investors pay less attention to the good an
innovation can do for the community, and more attention to
how much the applicant reminds them of a younger version of
their ambitious selves.
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